Former Vice-President Dick Cheney went on This Week on Sunday to discuss his views on the Obama administration's use of the civilian justice system (as opposed to the military courts) for the Christmas Day bomber and others. Cheney largely rehashed many of his prior arguments- that accused terrorists should be treated as enemy combatants, that waterboarding is an essential tool, etc.- but he pulled a sleight of hand which seemingly went unnoticed by Jonathan Karl, the interviewer.
Midway through the interview, Jonathan Karl highlighted several instances where the Bush administration had, in fact, promoted the civilian court system in prosecuting accused terrorists, including Richard Reid in late 2001 (in a situation almost perfectly analogous to the Christmas Day bomber's), and the use of a Bush administration US Justice Department manual effective from 2001 through 2005 which championed the use of civilian courts for accused terrorists.
In response, Cheney argued:
Well, we didn't all agree with that. We had -- I can remember a meeting in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House where we had a major shootout over how this was going to be handled between the Justice Department, that advocated that approach, and many of the rest of us, who wanted to treat it as an intelligence matter, as an act of war with military commissions.
We never clearly or totally resolved those issues. These are tough questions, no doubt about it. You want my opinion, my view of what ought to happen, I think we have to treat it as a -- as a war. This is a strategic threat to the United States. I think that's why we were successful for seven-and-a-half years in avoiding a further major attack against the United States.
And I do get very nervous and very upset when that's the dominant approach, as it was sometimes in the Bush administration or certainly would appear to be at times in the new Obama administration.
In other words, Cheney didn't dispute that the Bush administration had used the civilian court system frequently to deal with accused terrorists, nor the fact that it was official DOJ policy for over half of the Bush administration to use the civilian court system. He doesn't even attempt to argue those decisions slipped through unnoticed. To the contrary, he specifically recalls how contentious the debate was within the Bush administration, and that for the first half of the Bush administration, his side of the debate failed to carry the day (and that the issue was never "clearly or totally resolved"). Cheney point out that he personally disagreed with the administration's decisions from 2001-2005 which resulted in several detainees receiving civilian trials (as of 2005, charges had been filed in civilian courts against 375 accused terrorists).
And then he pulls his sleight of hand.
He argues that the Bush administration treated it "as a war," as a "strategic threat to the United States," and consequently, "that's why we were successful for seven-and-a-half years in avoiding a further major attack against the United States.
Cheney just got finished telling all of us that his views on the civilian court system largely were not adopted from 2001-2005, and then claims in the next breath that because of his views, we were all kept safe for 7.5 years.
If Mr. Cheney wants to tout the lack of any successful terrorist attack within the United States following 9/11 (although some on the right even want to argue 9/11 didn't happen while Bush was president), he is free to do so. It could be that the Bush administration's efforts kept us safe during those 7.5 years (we don't really have much information to reach an informed opinion either way right now). If that's his argument, though, he is implicitly stating that the use of the civilian court system was an integral part of keeping us safe during that time (even while explicitly saying it wasn't).
Why the obvious contradiction? One gets the feeling he is more concerned with the politics of the matter than the truth of the matter.
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